Your Team Isn't Unmotivated. They Can't See the Target

Ethan was nine years old, wiry, and loud on the soccer field. Near the water, he shrank.

The deep-water swim test was the gatekeeper at our camp. Pass it, and you got a blue wristband. You could kayak. You could jump off the tower. Fail, and you stayed in the shallow end. Ethan had failed twice.

The third attempt. He stood on the dock, shivering. The buoy floated fifty yards out. To a nine-year-old, it looked like miles.

"I can't," he whispered. "It's too far."

I knelt down. "Ethan. Do not look at the buoy."

He looked confused.

"Look at the lifeguard chair," I said. "The orange one. Do you see it?" Fifteen yards out. Manageable.

"Yes."

"Swim to that. Just to the chair. Then stop and tread water."

He dove. He reached the chair, gasping.

"Good. Now look at the raft." Another fifteen yards. He made it.

"Now look at the buoy." Twenty yards. Right there.

His hand slapped the white plastic. The dock erupted in cheers.

Ethan didn't get stronger in those ten minutes. He didn't develop better lungs. He got a target he could see.

The Science of the Spark

In the 1980s, neuroscientist Wolfram Schultz ran experiments that changed how we understand motivation. He monitored the dopamine neurons in monkeys' brains while they performed a simple task: a light would flash, they'd wait, then juice would arrive.

At first, dopamine fired when the juice came. The brain said, "This tastes good." But as the monkey learned the pattern, something shifted. The dopamine

stopped firing when the juice arrived. It started firing the moment the light flashed.

The brain stopped rewarding consumption. It started rewarding prediction.

This is the mechanism of motivation. Dopamine is not about pleasure. Dopamine is about pursuit. The spike happens when you see the reward, when you realize the goal is reachable.

Here's the dark side: when the light flashes but the juice never comes, dopamine doesn't just stay flat. It crashes below baseline. The brain registers this as betrayal. Do it enough times, and the monkey stops looking at the light altogether.

This is what happens in most workplaces.

A manager creates a slide deck. "Here's our Q4 goal!" The team works. They stay late. They wait for the juice. But the recognition gets buried in the next quarter's panic. Or it gets diluted by, "Good job, now here's more work."

The brain registers a betrayal. The effort isn't worth the energy. So the brain cuts the fuel line.

We call this "quiet quitting." We blame it on entitlement or laziness. It's neither. It's a biological conservation strategy. The human brain constantly runs a cost-benefit analysis: if I spend this energy, will I get that reward?

If the answer is "maybe," "later," or "probably not," the brain dims the lights.

The Feedback Loop Problem

At camp, the feedback loop is tight. Effort leads to result leads to celebration. Charlie throws a Frisbee through a hoop, and his teammates roar. Ten seconds from action to reward.

In most workplaces, the loop is broken. Effort leads to waiting leads to more waiting leads to an annual review. Six months between action and feedback.

We're asking people to swim across an ocean without a single buoy in sight.

Lisa, an operations VP I worked with, realized this when her team went flat. They had a sixty-page strategic plan. Revenue targets, retention goals, efficiency metrics. Six months of grinding toward a Q4 deadline.

She looked at them and saw ghosts.

So she bought a brass bell. She put it on the conference table.

"This is the Friday Bell," she said. "We pick one goal for the week. Just one. If we hit it by Friday at 2:00 PM, we ring the bell. And we go home early."

The first week, her developer James fixed the API integration by 1:45 PM on Friday. He walked to the table, picked up the bell, and rang it.

The sound cut through the office. For a moment, silence. Then applause.

Her team wasn't lazy. They were blind. They needed a signal. Once she made the target visible, they swam.

What You Can Try

Look at your team's current goals. Can they see the next target? Not the annual plan, not the quarterly objective. The next thing they can actually reach.

If you're managing projects that stretch over months, create intermediate buoys. Weekly milestones with visible markers. Something that triggers the dopamine of "I'm getting closer."

If you're leading a classroom, put a progress bar on the wall. Fill it in as the class moves forward. Let them see the distance closing.

If you're parenting, catch your child in the act of trying. "I saw how hard you focused on that math problem just now." Connect effort to recognition in real time, not three weeks later when the report card arrives.

The buoy doesn't have to be fancy. It has to be visible.

The Real Problem

Motivation isn't a character trait. It's a design problem.

We talk about drive like some people have it and others don't. Camp teaches a different lesson. Motivation can be built into the day, the way you build a fire. You need dry tinder. You need air. You need a spark.

The buoys are the tinder. The cheering fills the air. The spark is that first thought: maybe I can do this.

If you're frustrated with a team that seems checked out, ask yourself: can they see what they're swimming toward? Is the light flashing, or is it hidden behind a sixty-page deck nobody reads?

Your team isn't unmotivated. They just need a buoy.

About the Author

Matt Kaufman has spent 40 years in summer camp as a camper, counselor, and director, studying what makes people belong, grow, and thrive. He writes about intentional community, leadership, and the intersection of technology and human connection.

Connect with Matt:

• Instagram: @mattlovescamp

• LinkedIn: Matt Kaufman

• Website: ilove.camp

Books by Matt Kaufman:

• The Campfire Effect: How to Engineer Belonging in a Disconnected World (February 2026)

• The Summer Camp MBA: 50 Leadership Lessons from Camp to Career